Stop Trying to Get Micro-Famous With Your Wedding

Maybe you sat around dreaming of a day that you'd become A Bride. Maybe you imagined your perfect Say Yes to the Dress moment (maybe minus the crazy-high price tag on the dress), the chance to dream up a hashtag (#WifeForLife), exactly how the flowers wold look (vintage with a touch of contemporary class; Edwardian Princess!), a signature cocktail made from mezcal and dried pony blood (margaritas are so 2016). And maybe you fantasized about that insanely gorgeous editorial spread that would appear in a bridal magazine or on a wedding site in the months after, referring to you as: "Bride, Age, Occupation."

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Hopefully, you didn't do the latter, but maybe you know someone who has. And if you do, it wouldn't be too surprising — just maybe a little bloodcurdling and nausea-inducing (and, I don't know, maybe it made you vomit into a Mason jar with twine around it that you got as a souvenir at someone else's wedding. Useful souvenir!).

In this day and age of viral weddings, there are many, many people out there who want their two seconds of fame, but for the love of all things weddings and human — Do. Not. Try. To. Get. Famous. For. Your. Wedding. There's a whole bunch of viral shit I didn't want to do at my wedding, because my wedding was not a performance, it was something special shared between me, my (now) husband, and our friends and family. Planning every detail so that it maybe becomes a bloggable, shareable, editorial sensation just seems...silly.

I mean, really: Can you imagine planning your wedding with the goal of being featured in an editorial spread? This is not the same as a wedding announcement, which can range from touching and amazing to overtly self-indulgent and elitist. But just pause and consider the former. It entails thinking for more than a split second that your wedding is so special that it warrants more attention than any other wedding. And do you know how many people are getting married every day? Many. And those randos who don't know you couldn't give a shit about your wedding. Their best friend's? Sure. Theirs? Totally. Yours? No. Your wedding may be your thing, but it's not A Thing. That doesn't make your wedding any less special to you, but it doesn't endear it to some random person on the Internet.

Your wedding may be your thing, but it's not A Thing.

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Maybe a couple just wants to get their wedding paid for. I get it; weddings are expensive AF, and everyone wants a break. But asking someone to do your photos for free by offering yourself up as free content so you can be in magazine is a little tone-deaf, don't you think? How would that personal pitch go, may I ask? "I am so beautiful and my husband is so charming! It will be YOUR PLEASURE, wedding photographer who typically demands for her client's firstborn as a retainer, to take care of me for free!" And the pitch to get into wedding site or magazine? Even the most aggressive publicists might have a hard time with that, lest you did something really unique, like I don't know, you were covered in pine cones.

Also, much like very best viral content on the Internet, those gorgeous wedding spreads you see in magazines and on bridal blogs are often chosen after the fact, when a photographer submits what he or she thought was the most organically beautiful, not what was painstakingly choreographed while seeking fame. Finding out that your wedding was one of the most gorgeous weddings of the year and that a photographer relished in taking your photos is extremely different than desiring that attention from the get-go.

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Look, I'm here for your beautiful photos. I'm here for the painstaking attention to detail that goes into your wedding. Those Mason jar centerpieces and signature cocktails with dried pony blood, maybe not as much, but you do you, it's your wedding, not a slapdash affair, and you're unique, I'm sure.

What I'm so unbelievably over? Brides who make their weddings about something that weddings are — spoiler alert — not: a weird, newfangled self-indulgence that's more about getting other random people who don't matter to you to fawn over you than you basking in your bridal glory. The wedding industrial complex may have you believe that weddings are, inherently, self-indulgent, because indulgence = $$ = good business = capitalism = not very romantic anymore, when you think about it.

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And with that industrial complex compounded with the nature of the Internet, we've strayed from what weddings are actually about: two humans saying "I love you" for eternity in front of their loved ones. And, yes, that can often mean throwing a killer, detailed affair for your guests (your guests, not random Internet people!!), making yourself feel stunning (obviously, you don't want to look back at those photos and say, "wow, I sure looked like a heap of garbage on my special day!"), and wanting damned good photos — good enough to win a contest, but without the intention or lust for that to happen. Attention to detail to make a day extra special — and taking pride in that attention to detail — is important. But it's about the impetus behind it —why, exactly, are you being so indulgent? Is it for you and your spouse, or is it part of your great quest to amass the most likes on Instagram?

If your biggest goal in life is to be in a magazine's best weddings of 2017 issue, I encourage you to take up a hobby. Shuffleboard! An improv class! Go to Flywheel if you're competitive. But enjoy your wedding for what it's really about — a day honoring the very cool concept that you're choosing to be with someone for a lifetime. Some people can't even choose someone they'd want to spend more than ten seconds with. Lucky you! You got it. It has to be OK that this day is not a popularity contest, and there's no winning after the last guest goes home, other than the fact that you get to spend the rest of your life with this one amazing person. And that should feel better than getting a ton of Instagram likes or 15 minutes of fame in a bridal publication.

But enjoy your wedding for what it's really about — a day honoring the very cool concept that you're choosing to be with someone for a lifetime.

Like I said, it is perfectly normal and even awesome to think "that is cool" if you find that you have wound up on a wedding blog or incidentally gone viral or, hell, if your wedding was The Very Best Wedding of All Time. What is not cool is dreaming about that moment. What is not cool is staging your event in hopes that it becomes the most Pinterest-perfect, blogged-about event of all time. What is not cool is aspiring for that micro-fame. Do your wedding for you and your partner and your family and your guests, and if other people like it, then, cool. If they don't, fuck 'em. It was your day, anyway.

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